124. Leukemia and beyond: Next-gen precision cell therapy, Ivan Dimov, Co-Founder & CEO, Orca Bio

Synopsis: Ivan Dimov is the Co-Founder and CEO of Orca Bio, a cell therapy company focusing on next-generation precision cell therapies for blood cancer patients. Orca Bio’s cell therapies are designed to replace a patient’s cancerous blood and immune system with a healthy one, with the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for survivors. Ivan discusses the historically limited treatment options for blood cancer patients and the resulting unmet need, how Orca Bio’s innovative technology is tackling this problem, and how he uses lessons from history to learn from failures and build success. Biography: Ivan launched Orca Bio in 2016 and is Chief Executive Officer of Orca Bio. He is also co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Lucira Health, a molecular diagnostics company that received the first FDA authorization for a COVID-19 at-home self-testing kit. Prior to Orca Bio, Ivan was Siebel Fellow and visiting Instructor in Irv Weissman’s laboratory and Senior Scientist at Stanford University. He was also a visiting research scholar at the BioPOETS Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed innovative microfluidic platforms for stem cell research and low-cost molecular diagnostics. Earlier in his career, Ivan founded BlobCode Technologies, a startup that incorporates 2D barcode reading capabilities using the standard camera within a mobile phone. Ivan has a PhD in applied biophysics from Dublin City University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electronics, telecommunications, and computer science from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile. He has established 2 research centers in Chile in the robotics and hospital technologies arena that provide clinical engineering and technology innovation to the largest hospitals in the country. Ivan has published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has more than 40 patents or patent applications.